Court shuts down Russia’s oldest human rights organization
Eugene Chudnovsky
On Wednesday, Moscow City Court shut down the oldest human rights organization in Russia, the Moscow Helsinki Group.
It took judge Mikhail Kazakov less than 20 minutes to listen to the arguments before he rendered his decision at the request of the Justice Ministry. The judge’s ridiculous ruling centered on the organization having Moscow in its name while working outside of the Russian capital.
Moscow Helsinki Group was established in 1976 in the apartment of Andrei Sakharov. He was the creator of Russian nuclear weapons who later turned dissident, spent six years in exile, was awarded the Nobel Peace Price, and was elected to the Russian Parliament during Gorbachev’s time. The original group consisted of famous Russian political dissidents such as Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Andrei Amalrik, Elena Bonner, Petro Grigorenko, Yuri Orlov, Natan Sharansky, and others.
The group was set up to monitor Soviet compliance with the Helsinki Accords adopted at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki in 1975. The document was signed by 35 nations, including the United States and Russia. It played an important role in reducing the tensions of the Cold War. Among other provisions, it called for establishing the inviolability of European borders, rejection of any use of force, and respect for human rights.
Soon after its founding, Helsinki groups were formed in Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia, and Armenia. Their activities included travel throughout the USSR to obtain firsthand information about arrests and detentions. Regular reports about human rights violations were handed to Western reporters and distributed as samizdat (underground distribution of banned literature)
Arrests of the members of Helsinki groups began in 1977. They followed an explosion in the Moscow subway that prompted Sakharov to accuse the KGB of the provocation aimed at discrediting political dissidents. The Moscow Helsinki Group ceased to exist after its members went on trial for “anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.” They received draconian prison sentences. Sakharov was arrested and sent into exile in 1980.
The group was reestablished in 1989 after the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. Alexeyeva headed it from 1996 until she died in 2018. In 2017, on her 90th birthday, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a visit to her apartment in Moscow to express his gratitude to Alexeyeva for her “contribution to the strengthening of democratic institutions and civil society in Russia.” The picture of Putin drinking tea with Alexeyeva was publicized by the Russian media.
At the time of its dissolution by the court, the Moscow Helsinki Group was co-led by Vyacheslav Bakhmin (former Russian political prisoner) and Valery Borshchev (former member of the Russian Duma). Borshchev spoke during the short hearing. He accused the court of “committing a great sin” by dissolving the last human rights organization in Russia that was a part of Russian history. He called it a blow to the global human rights movement.
The shutdown of the Moscow Helsinki Group was preceded by the liquidation of another prominent Russian human rights watchdog, Memorial, in 2021. The Memorial was documenting mass graves of the Soviet era, and it came under the ax before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That invasion made the Russian signature under the Helsinki Accords void; no wonder the Moscow Helsinki Group became a sore in the eye of the Russian leader.
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Eugene Chudnovsky is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and the co-chair of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.